Jon, > Enough Pertec drives were made so that manuals should be no problem. > Some other makes were made in fairly small numbers so manuals may be a > problem.
I should have been more clear - the manuals were for the ISA interface card and the accompanying SW not for an particular drive. > You have to decide, spring-arm, vacuum-column or streaming, and then > most dual density drives were either 800/1600 or 1600/6250. Few would > do all three. (Also there's 3200 BPI, identical to 1600 PE mode, just > double the clock, but it is a fairly rare setup.) Thanks for the info. I had seen (on YouTube) videos of the vacuum-column and streaming drives. The spring arm I am not familiar with. Is it just an arm that produces tension on the tape keeping it in place? > Oh, with "Pertec interface" there are TWO FLAVORS! The old system was > Pertec unformatted, with 3 cables. > Write, Read and Control. Later was Pertec formatted, with two cables. > They are totally incompatible, so make sure you get drives compatible > with your interface. Thanks again. I was not aware of this. My card has the two 50 pin edge connectors coming from one cable that terminates in a D-Sub so I would say this is the Pertec formatted interface. I could also go SCSI as long as the tape drives would follow "standard" SCSI commands but those type of drives seem even more expensive. -Ali